Gilcrest cabooses find new homes

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com
Cars race by a Santa Fe Railway caboose just off of U.S.85 in Gilcreston Friday morning. The caboose was recently purchased after a worker with Paragon Bridge Works refurbished it, hoping to convert it into his office.

JOSHUA POLSON/jpolson@greeleytribune.com
The red caboose for sale off of U.S. 85 won't be there much longer; a Brighton resident will likely take it home. Gilcrest-based Paragon Bridge Works inherits and refurbishes cabooses on the side so that they don't end up in the scrap yard.

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Noah Figueroa didn’t want to get rid of the red caboose he found in Pueblo, but circumstance demanded it.

Figueroa, project manager for Paragon Bridge Works in Gilcrest, said he took a liking to the Santa Fe Railway caboose, sandblasting and repainting it in the hopes that it would one day become his office.

When his California-based company moved administrative operations out of Gilcrest, the caboose was left alongside U.S. 85, tucked beside industrial storage yards and a yellow caboose that had met a similar fate. After sitting idle for years, the red caboose recently has been advertised to highway passersby that it could be theirs for only $12,000 and a little tender love and care.

Now the fixtures of U.S. 85 are finding new homes, but for Figueroa and company, plenty more cabooses need saving.

Paragon converts old railroad cars into bridges, so Figueroa said he and his coworkers often come across abandoned cabooses on their visits to rail car yards.

“We hate to see them going to scrap yards,” Figueroa said.

Instead, he said they pay about $5,000 to have the cabooses transported, and then sometimes start cleaning them up. When things got slow around the office, Figueroa said he would head out to work on the red caboose.

“We don’t really make any money off of these things,” Figueroa said. “It’s just kind of fun to do.”

He said the company has taken in 30 or so cabooses as they scavenge for building materials, but the red caboose became a pet project.

“I liked that caboose,” Figueroa said, partly because of the placement of the cupola (the little elevated section on top of the car), which is offset on this caboose, rather than in the center.

Now, the red caboose will likely be shipped to a buyer in Brighton, he said.

The yellow caboose — a 1952 Union Pacific model — will also stay in Weld County.

As a matter of fact, it will return to its previous home in LaSalle, where the caboose sat next to a remodeled railroad station until 2008. At that point, town officials said it could cost up to $50,000 to refurbish the caboose and they chose to sell it to Figueroa.

A LaSalle family recently bought the caboose, where it sits on their private property.

Other cabooses that Figueroa’s company have picked up were converted into things like cabins, coffee shops and even a screen-printing shop, he said.

“People just want to do business out of a caboose,” Figueroa said.

He said caboose restoration is really a side thing, so he hasn’t kept track of exactly how many cabooses have crossed his path.